Whether you’ve already fallen for Pinterest or not, no one can deny the new network’s popularity. Instead of sharing your thoughts or actions, you get to share beautiful images. Not only that, those images don’t have to be hand made, only hand picked – all you have to do is find them on the Web, and you’re all set.

As with many other geeks, I decided one night that it was high time I gave Pinterest a try. One thing led to another, and I found myself on a search for ways to learn how to use Pinterest better, and make pinning quicker and easier, at the end of which I had quite a collection of interesting Pinterest tools with which I could make even better use of Pinterest.

Pinterest Right-Click [Firefox]

Pinterest Right-Click is a simple and straightforward add-on for Firefox. As you’ve probably guessed already, what it does is add a “Pin Image” item to the right-click context menu. With Pinterest Right-Click, you can browse the Web, and every time you find an image you wish to pin, simply right-click the image to pin it.

This works with full-size images, thumbnails, and pretty much any form of image you may encounter. Once you click on “Pin Image”, a small window will open with the regular pinning details you need to provide for Pinterest. And there you have it, light-speed pinning which is even better than the bookmarklet.

Pinterest Pro [Chrome]

With Pinterest Pro for Chrome, you get three useful Pinterest features in one extension. Just like the former Pinterest Right-Click, Pinterest Pro adds a “Pin to Pinterest” option to the Chrome context menu. Unlike the Firefox extension, though, it doesn’t open a small new window, but a whole new tab, where you can enter the details and complete the pin.

Another interesting feature Pinterest Pro offers is the Popular Pin Dropdown – immediate access to recent popular pins through a Chrome button, without having to load Pinterest at all. This one is for true Pinterest addicts.

PinReach

PinReach (formerly PinClout), is a web analytics tool for Pinterest, which aims at being for Pinterest what Klout is for Twitter. At the moment, PinReach is still a bit half-baked, but can still provide some useful and fun information about your Pinterest account.

To start, sign up for an account with PinReach, providing your exact Pinterest username. Once you complete the registration process, you can access your PinReach dashboard.

On the left, you can see your PinReach score (mine is not very high), along with all your basic Pinterest statistic such as number of pins, likes, followers, etc.

The dashboard includes four tabs – Analytics, Boards, Pins and Influential Followers. Out of these four, the middle two are the most informative ones. In Boards, you can see how many followers, pins, repins, likes, etc. each of your boards has. In Pins, you can see your most popular pins, and how many times each of them has been repinned by others.

The Analytics tab is less than perfect at the moment, providing three hard to understand graphs without board names or pin names. The Influential Followers tab is useful only if your followers are using PinReach as well.

It’s unclear how the PinReach score is calculated, but it’s probably based on likes, repins, number of pins and boards, etc. PinReach is a fun way to gauge your Pinterest activity and popularity, and see how you match up to others.

PinAQuote is an original and awesome way to use Pinterest. With PinAQuote, you’re not limited to pinning images – you can pin quotes. How does it work?

To start, visit pinaquote.com and drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar. Next time you find a quote you like, simply highlight the text and click on the “Pin A Quote” bookmarklet.

In the next step, you can edit the quote, tell PinAQuote who said it, and if you have $1.99 to spare for the pro edition, even change the fonts and colors of your quote pin.

In the final step, you can view a preview of your pin before you pin it to Pinterest. Even without pro features, these quotes are beautiful and are very worthy of a pin.

Pin Search [No Longer Available]

Although Pinterest provides a source for every image, we sometimes want to know more. Where else does this image appear? Where can we find similar images? The best answers to these questions can be found on Google Images, and this is where Pin Search for Chrome comes in handy.

After installing the extension, a new Search button will appear every time you hover over a Pinterest Image. Clicking the search button will perform a Google Image search for the image, and open a new tab with the results, which include the image’s original size, other sizes it’s available in, where it appears and visually similar images. This is a great way to turn Pinterest into an even wider discovery tool for images.

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Stephanie Reed

May 1, 2017 at 4:20 pm

The tool I like for managing and automating my Pinterest account is www [dot] PinPinterest [dot] com It has got me about 55k followers in the last 7 months.
PinPinterest is free for all, runs online, sets up fast, has Pin Scheduling and Speed control features. The mobile optimised website lets you have access to your account anytime and from any device.
Its intelligent algorithm pins only content relevant to my business, thus keeping my boards clutter-free...
Its truly the tool of the future.?

Ok, where is the article AND my question and comment about where is the article? I only see a blank page and the comments, but not my own. I can scroll down and see OTHER articles, but NOT the one I came to look at. Very aggravating.

All I want to do is see all the pictures on a Pinterest page large size w/o having to open each one and close each one separately.

This is why I never got into Pinterest and still don't use it. Heck with it.

I am having trouble also.When I choose a pin to pin it opens my pinterest and then when I choose which board I want to pin onto this frame or whatever it's called with my boards is very tiny and unreadable. Is there some way to fix this ? Please help my other computer is ok.

That sucks. I didn't encounter that problem, but my main browser is Firefox these days so maybe I just don't use it enough. Maybe you can contact the developer about this bug? It should be possible to fix.

I see, that's too bad. Sorry about that. In the meantime, you can try using something like Hover Zoom to automatically enlarge images. It works on many websites, not only Pinterest. Then you can disable this feature in Pinterest Pro, and still enjoy the other features it offers without the bug.

Suhel

April 14, 2012 at 6:00 am

@Yaara I'm not able to get the zoom thingy in the pinterest pro... how do we do that :(

I just tried it myself, and it didn't work for me either. I tried it with a different extension - Hover Zoom - and board images still did not zoom. I'm thinking Pinterest must have changed something when they added the "Change board cover" option about a week ago.

Yaara, we're building a collection of Pinterest tools at Pinstamatic (http://www.pinstamatic.com). At the moment you can pin quotes, stickies, Twitter profiles, Calendar dates and even maps. Keep checking back, we'll be adding even more soon. Thanks!